With the Xbox One, Microsoft hasn’t so much torn up the cable box as shoved it aside. The unit’s HDMI pass-through feature, kludgy as it may seem, has the effect of getting the cable box off HDMI 1 on the TV so the Xbox One can go there instead.
The case accusing Apple of fixing ebook prices is heating up. New court documents show that Steve Jobs’ biographer have been dropped from the case but that Jobs himself is still at the center of it.
Co-opting over-the-top services and whatever other functionality is supported by a set-top — like gaming — into a single, seamless experience for their own subscription service could give pay-TV providers greater leverage with content owners in their increasingly pitched battles over programming costs.
Steve Jobs knew that design was the foremost element in translating computing advances born of the clunky world of engineers into something for the average human. But not all design breakthroughs need to stop the world: sometimes, thoughtful incremental improvements can be just as profound.
Book publisher Simon & Schuster is ramping up video distribution, creating content channels and signing with partners like Roku, Blinkx and Taboola. For now, the videos are intended to promote books and authors, not to drive advertising revenue.
Class action lawyers want Steve Jobs’ biographer to hand over his source material to help them prove that Apple and publishers fixed e-book prices. But a judge has agreed that the author can refuse under a law that protects journalists and their sources.
Last week, the Department of Justice sued Apple and five book publishers for allegedly colluding to set e-book prices. What does the suit mean for readers today and in coming weeks?
A dedicated Apple TV set was a hot topic at the end of 2011. So far in 2012, news on that front has been relatively quiet, but a new note by longtime Apple TV set booster and Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is reigniting the discussion.
Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography has clearly been successful, topping best-seller lists ahead of its release, but new numbers reveal the extent of that success. The 656-page book has sold around 379,000 copies in the U.S. during its first week, according to a Nielsen report.
If you take the time to look beyond the select outrageous quotes that have appeared in headlines everywhere for the past two weeks, you find a balanced telling of the life of a man who was far from balanced himself in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs.
